London's Burning: Rolling thread for the 2011 summer protests, riots and general unrest

lmfao

when do the housing benefit cuts kick in? 2012?

riots across london in 2012 will be kind of embarassing for the government during its olympic year

David Cameron is really dropping a bollock with this by the way. Second huge, stupid, unforced error of his premiership.

Housing benefit is a massive flashpoint - especially as more poor people are moved out of economically mixed areas, it'll just allow more areas like this to fester.

distrust anyone who uses the phrase "it's as simple as that" about this

Turns out my gf and little lad were in the cinema in Harrow watching Harry Potter when they turned the film off and announced they were evacuating the town centre. He was NOT HAPPY.

lol just saw a looter, he was about twelve years old

Harringay Green Lanes retail park boarded up, literally 2 mins from where I live aaaargh but I think it'll be a false alarm

Harrow? Enfield? Really?

Would just board everything up if I were a shopkeeper right now. Who's going to be out in this?

Stevie, croydon? Which bit?

Round West Croydon station according to the Beeb right now.

"They live in a world of playstations and rap music! They have been weened on this since they left their mothers breast!"

David Cameron is really dropping a bollock with this by the way.

still in tuscany with his private tennis coach, lest we forget

what does "dropping a bollock" actually mean?

I'm not hearing any news of random passers-by being attacked, thank fuck. Not much of a comfort to people whose houses are burning mind.

Ok got it, west croydon outside comic shop, lovely.

No trains or buses out of w croydon. Is one of the least lovely parts of London IMO, for those who've never been.

my housemate has his samurai sword out

just in case

Very very cynical thought: riots allowed to burn out of control in poor areas now to justify complete revocation of any and all civil liberties & rights over period of martial law for Olympics? Too paranoid and cynical?

yes

Simon Hughes is on TV finger-wagging people who "think this is a fun way to spend the summer holidays". FFS.

I'm not hearing any news of random passers-by being attacked, thank fuck.

nah i saw the first tweet about passers-by being mugged for bikes and cash in london fields a few hours ago, then a friend of a friend got mugged http://twitter.com/#!/fransingh

would kinda respect Cameron more if he stubbornly stuck to his guns and refused to end his holiday even if London ends up split into a few dozen anarchist rogue states.

My lols about braving the riots in going to Hackney tomorrow (to sign a lease) have now turned into proper concern. Lousy hubristic cynicism.

"They live in a world of playstations and rap music! They have been weened on this since they left their mothers breast!"

Was speaking to a senior cop about murders in London a few months ago and this was basically his exact line. He was saying "they get nothing but killing from these rap videos they watch on that channel, what's it called...?" I was pondering saying "what, like Channel U or something?" and thought better of prolonging the conversation, then he remembered and said "oh yes, MTV"

:o

Turns out my gf and little lad were in the cinema in Harrow watching Harry Potter when they turned the film off and announced they were evacuating the town centre. He was NOT HAPPY.

― JimD, Monday, 8 August 2011 20:20 (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

If this happened just as Voldemort shot Harry then yeah, kids gonna be like OH SHIT

Yeah I got a delayed train out of Victoria, no services going thru Peckham AT ALL and the driver explained we might not stop in West Croydon due to "the wrong kind of unrest on track"

Streathim is weird, everyone is standing outside pubs, shops, talking, warning about riots and mobs - one lady stopped me outside Wimpy and told me to go home because the police told the shop to shut as there was "a mob coming over the hill" and pointed in the direction I'd just come from (seeing nothing on the way) but if we got Brixton overspill last night we might get Croydon overspill tonight.

bet that pig had never heard of the beatles either right

A man has been taken to hospital after being shot in the face on a street in Leeds.

Police officers were sent to Saville Place in the Chapeltown area of the city on Monday evening.

A police spokesman said they had few details of the incident but BBC television reporters at the scene said there was a crowd of up to 100 at the scene and some were masked.

A police spokesman confirmed one man had suffered gunshot injuries.

PaulLewis Paul Lewis
#Hackney Youth: "I wanted to see us do this to the fucking Feds for years."
5 minutes ago Favorite Retweet Reply

omfg EXPLANATION IS NOT JUSTIFICATION, everyone on the news

riot in new cross a bit of a non starter. went for a bit of a gawk, just some random looters and hipsters w/ slrs all milling about hoping for a bit of drama.

they're not really 'doing' anything 'to' the 'fucking feds' are they

really hate englishers using "Feds". we have our own nicknames for police. you don't have to steal slang from rap records, the beatles were doing it decades before.

I'm sure all those police officers living on the Pembury Estate will be gutted at it being trashed.

iirc "feds" means "people who live above shops" #slang

omfg EXPLANATION IS NOT JUSTIFICATION, everyone on the news

― lex pretend, Monday, 8 August 2011 20:47 (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

truthbomb

this is pretty fucked up. how is it that the met knew hackney was going to erupt all day and still arent prepared for it? what a sham. unless theyre just not bothered. maybe if it was primrose hill theyd make more effort.

"really hate englishers using "Feds"."

but the kids using feds dont wanna be using the same slang as old geezers from the 60s

they're not really 'doing' anything 'to' the 'fucking feds' are they

think the dudes setting fire to shit aren't really bothered by what you think

'oh no, i'm clocking up mad overtime, what a personal disaster' - the feds

i was pretty shocked actually that that huge building that got burnt out in tottenham was just a residential block. lots of families inside when they started the fire :|

xxxp looking down their noses at us from their lofty perches above the fried chicken shop.

then make up yr own slang for a new day. americanos being using 'feds' for decades too.

I don't like Englishers using "hipsters"

"if croydon wasn't on the map, it is now" - <3 u sky

to most ppl here though they wont know what on earth feds means cos the majority of britishers dont listen to hip hop so its still kinda 'code' unless youre in the know

media reporting on tv seems to be pathetic and smug so far - no real thought on journalists part into what this might all mean - will see what paxman is saying

lol dg

i don't think 'feds' is that recondite, really.....

media reporting on tv seems to be pathetic and smug so far - no real thought on journalists part into what this might all mean - will see what paxman is saying

― titchy (titchyschneiderMk2), Monday, August 8, 2011 8:58 PM (46 seconds ago) Bookmark

yeah... he'll know the score.

Kettled by the lol police

I had no idea someone involved in any way with journalism or the media could be ignorant of permutations of the term 'vox populi' #shame

seems like some people weren't on the porn/leather thread this summer.

Way to go guys, keep the tepid lolz rolling on this thread about an unarmed black man being gunned down by police.

i think, with this, there's so much to say and yet it feels so disappointing and depressing that saying anything feels futile. i could talk about some of the idiot opinions I've heard in the last 24 hours; about how he deserved it, or how if you 'choose' to be in a gang then you know what the consequences are, or if you have a gun you deserve to be shot, or that the media are inciting people to riot, but what's the fucking point? Boris'll get his watercannon, the police'll get off scot-free, the 2011 riots will be remembered as an embarrassment and it'll just happen again and again and the more it happens the more police and governmental oppression will win-out. happy fucking 2014.

the cafc messageboard is my general bellwether for how yr average person thinks about a big news story; there's essentially almost full support for the verdict there, with the justification that duggan was carrying a gun and was a nasty gangsta sort who chose the way of violence and got what was coming

i perhaps don't have the heart to go on and say that all of the above, while also being vindictive and spiteful, is completely irrelevant to the fact of systemic flaw & delegation that resulted in the act of a trigger being pulled on a man who was at that moment unarmed, and the process of obfuscation which followed

obviously this case is not one-fiftieth as horrifying as the de menezes one, but it is horrifying nonetheless

ladies and gentlemen, richard littlejohn

http://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bdm5rArCIAAeXY8.jpg

what a cunt

Since this irredeemably racist shitbag lives in Florida, does he have someone sending him AVIs of Benefits Street or did a sub just put that reference in there?

I can't even believe... I know it's Littlejohn but crikey...

so much utter repulsiveness compacted into four short sentences - you've gotta say he's an amazingly efficient writer

this is one troll who def shdn't have his hackery dignified with responses

this, this, this

DNFTT hasn't really worked so well w/r/t his career in general, has it?

i'm not trying to be sanctimonious, if people address his "points" without giving him attention that's a good thing

ignoring him has no effect on his career because he is also speaking to/for his constituency of poisonous tiny minds, the jeers of actual human beings are just an ego massage for him, that's the thrill we shd try to deny him

Yeah, this is Louise Mensch syndrome - you can know and dismiss that a certain person is nothing but a purely attention-seeking troll, but the moment that you see their attitudes being taken up and parroted by others, it is rather important to address those *attitudes*, without feeding the source troll.

OTM. It's not like he's the only person talking like this.

Carole Duggan also punched/shoved a Daily Mail reporter (GWAN) on Wednesday because of the way that paper dealt with her nephew's funeral, so this is Dacre's revenge.

surprised Dacre cares that much about the grunts tbh

Littlejohn lives in a gated community near Orlando, where there are TONS of cheesy Brits with similar views, and you can buy the Mail in convenience stores all over the state, wherever there are tourists and second-homers.

the justification that duggan was carrying a gun and was a nasty gangsta sort

If I see that phrase "Live by the swrod, die by the sword" again I'll punch a Daily Mail reporter

More like "live within racism, die by racism" unfortunately.

The CPS has declined to prosecute an armed office in another case (in Manchester) because they apparently didn't think a jury would convict:

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/jan/16/greater-manchester-police-health-safety-unarmed-anthony-grainger

The background to that shooting is unsurprisingly murky as fuck http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2315777/The-memory-stick-killing-When-police-lost-data-card-names-1-000-informants-questioned-father--cleared-Two-months-later-shot-dead.html

Ha, saw that earlier & thought of this thread. police being basically collectively prosecuted for killing someone under health&safety was so nakedly absurd w/ the jean charles de menezes case I am amazed they're doing it again

I think the difficulty in both cases was trying to find someone with enough individual responsibility to prosecute. That's not easy to do when you have a string of incompetent or dodgy decisions by a large number of people.

That's not easy to do not allowed when you have a string of incompetent or dodgy decisions by a large number of people police officers.

There's an element of that too, of course, but it's not much easier going after a rail company for corporate manslaughter after an avoidable crash, etc. Health and Safety regs are often used there too.